Equipments for the automatic deposit and withdrawal of banknotes are used in banking sites, as help for tellers or as “self service” equipments operable by customers, for banking transactions comprising the deposit and the withdrawal of cash. These equipments provide banknote receipting and dispensing modules or boxes, having function of recycling, mountable with possibility of replacing in respective housings, and in which each module or box is provided of a seat associated to a given typology of banknotes. For high storing capacity, modules or boxes are often preferred in which the banknotes are arranged as a stack with horizontal extension and support on a longer edge.
The number of employed housings and modules or boxes determines denominations and/or typologies of the banknotes to be handled, as well as dimensions and cost of the equipment. Therefore, in the case of vertically overlapped boxes, the number of the housings affects the overall height of the equipment. As an example, an equipment which proposes to recycle banknotes of the EURO system should provide seven modules or boxes, respectively, for the denominations of: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 Euro, and seven respective housings.
In the use, the boxes associated with the denominations or typologies of banknotes of reduced circulation, for instance the boxes for banknotes of 200 and 500 Euro, are generally subject to a limited number of storage and dispensing operations, for small quantities and reduced occupation of the seats. On the contrary, the boxes lodging the denominations of banknotes of greater circulation, for instance banknotes of 20 and 50 Euro, should satisfy high requests of storage and dispensing, often varying in the time.
The room provided in the equipment for the deposit of banknotes is therefore used in a non optimal way. Moreover, the boxes for the banknotes of greater circulation can easily reach the conditions of full box or empty box and blocking of the equipment: The emptying and recharging operations of the boxes should be frequent with increasing of the overheads. On the other hand, the addition of housings for the boxes of banknotes with greater circulation is expensive and it is often impracticable in view of current rules on the limits of height of the equipments.
Banknote processing equipments are known which use double modules for the deposit and the automatic withdrawal of banknotes, with function of recycling. These modules include a banknote seat with arrangement of the banknotes in superimposition and subdivision in two banknote stacks, and a couple of insertion and extraction devices. The stacks occupy together the banknote seat; the insertion and extraction devices are adjacent to terminal sections of the seat and insert and extract the banknotes by means of the transport mechanisms of the equipment. The room of the banknote seat is used in optimized way, but the equipment should provide, by opposite sides of the housings, two transport mechanisms for the two stacks of banknotes of the common seat. It creates problems of access in one or in both transport mechanisms, when an inspection is necessary or in the case of jam of the banknotes in movement.